On December 15, 2010 Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CDNS) announced that it had won Electronic Design Magazine's Best Electronic Design award for 2010 for the
Cadence® Encounter® Digital Implementation (EDI) System 9.1 in the EDA - Design, Verification and Implementation Environment category. This product is highlighted in Electronic Design's December 9, 2010 issue.

"I'm pleased to recognize Cadence's Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) System 9.1 as one of the best EDA technology offerings in 2010," said
David Maliniak, EDA technology editor, Electronic Design. "The tools represent a realization of Cadence's EDA360 vision and the kind of holistic approach to physical design and verification that is demanded at 28 nanometers and below."

Cadence Encounter EDI System is a complete and integrated digital design, implementation, and verification environment for the development of large-scale, complex SoCs, and delivers pervasive design intent, abstraction, and convergence across the flow for a more deterministic path to silicon success. The new and expanded suite of capabilities in EDI System answers the industry call for improved designer productivity in developing advanced low-power and mixed-signal SoCs at leading-edge process nodes -- such as 32 and 28 nanometers -- with hundreds of millions of gates, including hundreds of IP elements and embedded processors.

"The award is an industry benchmark that showcases the best of the year," said
David Desharnais, group director, product management at Cadence. "We're excited to receive this award; it is a testament of our commitment to tackling the challenges of end-to-end chip design and improving the time and economics involved with bringing SoCs to market. Electronic Design is a leading industry publication with a consistent pulse on not only the EDA industry, but the entire electronic design community. To be acknowledged by these industry leaders is strong confirmation that we are delivering on our promise and vision of EDA360."

On December 2, 2010
Magma® Design Automation Inc. (NASDAQ:LAVA) reported revenue of $33.93 million for its fiscal 2011 second quarter ended October 31, 2010 (a.k.a. our nominal Q3 2010), up 14.38% from the $29.66 million reported in the nominal Q3 2009 year-ago quarter. Sequentially, nominal Q3 revenue was up a narrow 4.2% compared to $32.56 million in nominal Q2 2010. Magma guidance 3 months ago was for revenue in nominal Q3 to come in between $33.0 and $33.50 million.

"We had another strong performance in the second (fiscal) quarter as, for the seventh consecutive quarter, we exceeded all guidance targets and generated cash," said Rajeev Madhavan, Magma chairman and chief executive officer. "Not only did our analog products continue to take market share, but we added five new customer logos in our core digital implementation segment - momentum that I expect will continue as we deploy Talus 1.2 and Talus Vortex FX, new products we announced today."

Other highlights of Magma's nominal Q3 2010 included an increased presence in the place and route segment to 18 of the world's Top 20 semiconductor companies; the addition of 5 new customers of the FineSim circuit simulation products; and adding three new customers each for the SiliconSmart library characterization product and the products.

GAAP Results

In accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Magma reported a net loss of $2.714 million, or $(0.04) per share (basic and diluted), for the quarter, compared to net income of $4.344 million, or $0.09 per share (basic) and $0.08 per share (diluted), for the year-ago quarter, a negative earnings swing year-over-year of $7.058 million, or minus 12 cents a share (diluted). Still, the net loss in nominal Q3 2010 was an improvement of $0.55 million compared the net loss recorded in the just prior quarter. Magma guidance 3 months ago was for nominal Q3 2010 EPS to be $(0.07) to $(0.08).

Finally, on a positive note, in nominal Q3 2010 Magma generated cash flow from operations of approximately $2.7 million.

Business Outlook

For Magma's nominal Q4 2010 ending January 30, 2011, the company expects total revenue in the range of $34.0 million to $34.5 million. GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of $(0.04) to $(0.03).

Magma self description

Magma's electronic design automation (EDA) software provides the "Fastest Path to Silicon"(TM) and enables the world's top chip companies to create high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) for cellular telephones, electronic games, WiFi, MP3 players, digital video, networking and other electronic applications. Magma products are used in IC implementation, analog/mixed-signal design, analysis, physical verification, circuit simulation and characterization. The company maintains headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and offices throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Asia and India. Magma's stock trades on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com. Magma is a registered trademark and "Fastest Path to Silicon" is a trademark of Magma Design Automation. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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Magma News Item

On December 22, 2010 Magma® Design Automation (NASDAQ:LAVA) announced that Electronic Design Magazine named the
Magma Tekton(TM) static timing analysis platform to its list of Hot 100 Products for 2010. Tekton is one of just three products named in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) category.

Introduced in March of this year, Tekton is uniquely suited for today's most challenging designs and offers higher capacity and faster runtimes than traditional tools, without sacrificing accuracy. It runs multi-scenario analysis efficiently on low-cost hardware without requiring a large number of expensive servers and software licenses. Tekton leverages breakthrough technology to address complex sign-off challenges.

"It gives us great pleasure to have Electronic Design recognize Tekton as a hot product for this year," said
Premal Buch, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. "Design teams have responded positively as well and have consistently told us that Tekton runs significantly faster as a timing analyzer on a single CPU and dramatically faster in a multimode, multicorner analysis on a multicore machine."

On November 19, 2010
Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) announced results for its fiscal third quarter ending October 31, 2010. For purposes of consistency, this is nominal Q3 2010 in EDA WEEKLY parlance.

For nominal Q3 2010, the company reported
Revenues of $238.937 million, up 26.3 % year-over-year compared to nominal Q3 revenue in 2009 of $189.196 million, and up 27.2% over sequential Q2 2010 revenue. For the last nine months, however, revenues were up only 7.4% to $607.448 million, vs. $565.592 million for the same 9 months last year. (By the way, the company's Q3 2010 revenue guidance 3 months ago was for $220 million).